Capcom are disappointed with Darkstalkers

Darkstalkers Resurrection has sold rather well, but not well enough apparently. The senior VP for Capcom USA, Christian Svensson, stated disappointment in the sales of the game, especially after the vocal support given by fighting game fans previously. ”It’s not as high on the chart as it needs to be”, apparently.

Personally, I’m a bit responsible. I’ve been hoping and asking for a Darkstalkers game for years, and I haven’t bought Resurrection. But it’s not a ”fully featured project” as he claims. Resurrection consists of arcade perfect ports of Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior with some bells and whistles like Third Strike-style challenges to undertake, an online mode and tutorials. However, I’m not buying it because of a few reasons:

* Vampire Savior is not the best version of the game. Savior was the third major game, but to fit the huge and animated roster within the aging CPS2 system, three old characters had to be cut to make room for five new ones. Eventually another two versions were made, Vampire Savior 2 and Vampire Hunter 2, which shuffled the cast around a bit. When the game was eventually ported, to Saturn, Playstation, Dreamcast, PSP and Playstation 2, all this nonsense was done away with and a complete ”Darkstalkers 3” included all 18 characters at once. In light of this, arcade perfect is still far off.

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* Even though I’m a rather big fan of the series and the characters, I don’t really play it more than once or twice a year. There’s only so much to do with such an old game that I’ve already played enough. Sure, it’s not that expensive but at this point, after another three versions of Savior, it’s pretty much charity.

* Not really Capcom’s fault, but after knowing that Playstation 4 won’t automatically play Playstation 3 games, getting Resurrection to have a good ”archive” copy of the game rather than having to fiddle with old consoles is not a selling point anymore. If this is ported and released again for Playstation 4, giving me the option of playing it for the next five years without a hassle, sure, I’ll bite.

* And, while it doesn’t really apply to me, Capcom really needs to consider the overcrowded market for downloadable classics. In the last few years, they’ve released Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Marvel Superheroes + Marvel vs Capcom, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Darkstalkers Resurrection, not to mention pushing three separate retail titles with multiple updates each. The attention of the community can only cover so many games. It’s a bit of a luxury problem of having too many classics to release, but it’s overcrowded still. And if you add releases like Final Fight + Magic Sword, or the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons release, which pretty much also target the same fans, you don’t help the problem.

So yeah, I’m not surprised that Capcom are disappointed. But the blame lies mostly on themselves, for not properly reading the market. It doesn’t mean that we won’t want a proper Darkstalkers 4. But if you release it along with three bigger franchises in the same year, yeah, it won’t sell either.

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  1. Erik Malm

    Honestly, what were they expecting, releasing a straight port of two 16-18-year-old ”anime”-esque games with 80-90% unknown/obscure characters… in the West?

    Sad as it is, I believe any Darkstalkers game would end up as a ”sleeper hit” at best outside of Japan, even if released in a less ”oversaturated” era. I wouldn’t even be surprised to learn that a new-generation DS game had never been in the cards in the first place.

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